A Good, Not Great Lake (from Points North)
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 9 April 2026
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode comes from Points North, a podcast about the land, water, and inhabitants of the Great Lakes. You can listen to Points North wherever you get your podcasts.
Lake Champlain is more than 16 times smaller than Lake Ontario, the smallest Great Lake. But in 1998, Congress designated Lake Champlain as the sixth Great Lake, teeing off a historical and cultural fight over which lakes can really call themselves Great.
Radio excerpts in this episode were originally broadcast on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Weekend Edition”. TV excerpts from “NBC Nightly News”.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Jamie Lang and Sophie Haboo have arrived on Disney Plus. |
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| 0:15.0 | I think of it like a Tamagocchi. |
| 0:17.0 | At the end of all of this... |
| 0:20.0 | We're going to have a little baby. Raising Chelsea, a Hulu |
| 0:23.7 | original series streaming exclusively on Disney Plus. 18 plus subscription required T's and T supply. |
| 0:30.9 | Hey everyone, it's Sally here. Today we are sharing a story from another podcast that we love, |
| 0:36.6 | called Points North. |
| 0:38.7 | It tells these carefully crafted stories from America's Great Lakes, like how in 1998, something strange happened in Congress. |
| 0:49.1 | Buried in a routine bill, lawmakers created a sixth Great Lake, Lake Champlain, long, skinny, and nowhere |
| 0:58.4 | near the size of the others, was suddenly in the same category as Superior in Michigan. |
| 1:03.9 | What followed was outrage, political maneuvering, and a fight over identity, money, and what counts as great. |
| 1:14.1 | Here is Points North. |
| 1:18.5 | This is Points North, a podcast about the land, water, and inhabitants of the Great Lakes. |
| 1:24.0 | I'm Dan Wansura. |
| 1:25.7 | More than 25 years ago, back in 1998, Tom Berry had a job in |
| 1:29.9 | politics in Vermont. It was late February when, out of the blue, Tom got a call from back home |
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